How do creative and cultural practitioners in the region foster community through their practice?

Across the UAE and the wider SWANA region, artistic and cultural practitioners have long turned to community as both method and material—finding in collaboration, hospitality, and shared space the foundations of a sustainable creative ecosystem.

From studio-based experiments to collective actions, these practices blur the boundaries between artmaking, organizing, and care.

This keynote brings together artists Moza Al Matrooshi and Vikram Divecha to reflect on how community-centered artistic practices evolve within the region’s shifting cultural landscape. Drawing on their respective experiences, the artists will consider how practitioners navigate institutional frameworks, engage the public, think beyond the studio, and build networks of mutual support.

By tracing these practices, the keynote invites audiences to reconsider how artistic production in the UAE extends beyond individual authorship, instead as a collective act of sustaining culture itself.

About your instructors:

Vikram Divecha is a Beirut-born artist who grew up in Mumbai and is based in the UAE. He holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and was a participant of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study program. Divecha’s practice focuses on ‘found processes’ – a term he uses to describe the urban operations he investigates and deploys. Divecha had his first survey exhibition titled ‘Short Circuits’ at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai in 2024. His work has been exhibited regionally and internationally at the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, 57th Venice Biennale, 13th Sharjah Biennial, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Wellcome Collection UK, Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (New York). He currently teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at the New York University Abu Dhabi.

Moza Al Matrooshi is a UAE baseda Sharjah-based artist and pastry chef. Moza’s artistic practice delves into ancient and contemporary mythologies of the Arabian Peninsula, exploring their connection to nation-building. Her work intertwines regional food production practices and food politics, using fiction to frame gender and geopolitics in the Gulf.